How data can ensure your glass is half full – not half empty

As host nation Japan gears up for the start of the 2019 Rugby World Cup, one key item on the agenda has been beer supplies for the 400,000 overseas fans expected to attend the tournament.

Back in May, The Japan Times reported that the event's Japanese organising committee was calling on business operators in cities that are hosting games to secure sufficient supplies, as previous World Cup matches have seen many restaurants and bars running out of beer.

During the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England, beer consumption at games was more than six times the amount consumed during football games at the same venues, according to the committee. Total beer consumption during the 2015 event stood at 1.9 million litres, including sales at public viewing sites. Of the total, 1.3 million litres were consumed at game venues.

Hindsight is, of course, a wonderful thing. But what if you could accurately predict the amount of beer that will be drunk at a particular venue? If you can understand where, what and when rugby fans drink – and combine that with details such as the age, gender and interests of fans – suddenly you have valuable guidance for future action.

Tamoco's client, a global beverage company, wanted to use location intelligence to better understand the drinking behaviour of fans – to help the business perform better across a number of functions, from advertising and marketing to insights and planning.

Tamoco collects vast amounts of first-party data and combines it with data from a network of precise sensors. But it was struggling to visualise all the data in a meaningful way for its client – and to quickly enable the extraction of insights.

By working with GeoSpock, Tamoco and its client were able to gather, index, visualise and query all the data – giving them valuable guidance for future actions.

The project investigated how footfall traffic changed during the World Cup, which venues performed well, how behavioural trends differed between different demographics, and how on-trade and off-trade patterns emerged.

Our data showed, for example, that visits to on-trade and off-trade venues increased throughout the tournament. But when we looked at the share between the two, we saw some interesting behaviour.

As a percentage of total visits, on-trade seemed to be a more popular option – suggesting that people were more likely to head to a bar to watch a group-stage game. After the knockout stage began, however, the percentage of off-trade visits increased more dramatically. This suggests there is some joy to be found for brands that want to push products and advertising in stores during the tense knockout matches.

We may not be able to predict who'll win this year's Rugby World Cup matches – but we could help predict who'll be the winners and losers when it comes to pulling pints.